Palais des Thés

Palais des Thés was founded in 1986 by François-Xavier Delmas, alongside a group of around 40 friends, at a moment when the Paris tea trade was dominated by long-established family houses. Delmas's approach was to source differently rather than compete on heritage he didn't have: growing up around wine culture gave him an early feel for terroir — how a specific patch of land and its handling shape flavor — and he applied that thinking to tea by traveling directly to producing regions rather than buying through importers.

Over roughly three decades he built relationships across tea-growing areas in Asia, Africa and South America, working alongside the farmers and producers themselves to understand regional techniques and quality at the source. That direct-sourcing model, sometimes described in-house as the work of “Tea Seekers” (Chercheurs de Thé), became the company's core differentiator against older Paris houses selling through intermediaries. From a single shop in the late 1980s, Palais des Thés has grown into one of Europe's larger specialist tea retailers, with more than 150 shops worldwide. For a visitor, the pitch isn't a historic name but a traceable one — teas the house can describe by garden and grower rather than only by blend.